Erlang 24.x for RHEL7 (OpenSSL-1.0.1)

[thoma...@gmail.com]

Hello,

We are trying to upgrade our RabbitMQ hosts to 3.10 and Erlang 24.X.

Unfortunately we have a large installed base on RHEL7 using OpenSSL 1.0.1.

I read on rabbitmq pages that Erlang 24 requires OpenSSL 1.1.X and the provided rpm packages are available for  RHEL8.4 and later only.

Now, as far as I can understand, Erlang 24 can be built with OpenSSL 0.9.8c or later [1] , so why is 1.1.X a requirement? Is it for something RabbitMQ specific?

What I want to avoid if possible is to keep the door open for our RHEL7 to have a RabbitMQ 3.10/erlang 24 upgrade path.

Lifting the OS is not a trivial task in our environment.

If we venture to compile Erlang 24 using OpenSSL 1.0.1, what would be the risk? Will it even work?

Appreciate your advice!

Thank you!

Best Regards,

Thomas

[1] https://www.erlang.org/doc/installation_guide/install

[Luke Bakken]

Hi Thomas,

You can get a good idea of how we compile OpenSSL for RabbitMQ by checking out how the official Docker images are built:

https://github.com/docker-library/rabbitmq

Now, as far as I can understand, Erlang 24 can be built with OpenSSL 0.9.8c or later [1] , so why is 1.1.X a requirement? Is it for something RabbitMQ specific?

No, it's probably due to security fixes in 1.1.X. 

What I want to avoid if possible is to keep the door open for our RHEL7 to have a RabbitMQ 3.10/erlang 24 upgrade path.

Lifting the OS is not a trivial task in our environment.

If we venture to compile Erlang 24 using OpenSSL 1.0.1, what would be the risk? Will it even work?

You would be using a less secure version of OpenSSL. Depending on your environment, it may not matter. It should work so give it a try!

Thanks,

Luke 

[thoma...@gmail.com]

Hi Luke,

Thank you for your reply!

I will try to compile a version that works with our RHEL7 hosts.

Kind Regards,

Thomas